[Sca-cooks] Strawberries and Snow

[Jane Williams]

On 12 May 2002 at 14:50, Philip & Susan Troy
wrote:

> What I'm curious about is the fact that everybody seems to ignore the
> actual whipping method described in the recipe....

> So why and how did the author of the Proper Neue Boke accomplish
> this, beating the egg whites and cream together, lifting off the foam
> as it accumulates. One of the things modern cooks tend to be taught
> is that egg whites have their proteins "shortened" by the presence of
> fats, and therefore you don't want cream or egg yolks in with any egg
> whites you intend to beat stiff. Observation suggests that this is a
> reliable rule, and yet when you beat them together, you _do_ get some
> foam. You just don't get as much, or really the same, foam.

> I haven't done this [in the manner described in the recipe], and
> probably won't get to it anytime soon. If anybody does, would they
> let us know?

I tried this a couple of years back, though with an
electric whisk, not a twig one. I found it very difficult
to get the foam to appear, but what did turn up was
of much greater volume that I expected for the
amount of egg used. I seem to remember it being
stiffer than if I'd just beaten egg whites and added
cream afterwards, but this may be a false memory.

At the time, I put the bad results down to my
inexperience, and I may well have been right.